Letter from P. Wilson to Donald McLean dated 1st. May 1854. Monday, 1st, May 1854. My dear Mac, I have just returned from a visit to Hay and family, at Tataraimaka, and find my wife busy scribbling a letter to you; so I just take up stumpy to do the same. She will tell you all, no doubt, about our concert and play; both of which went off most admirably. Fancy my making at our last Masonic meeting, on the subject of the anticipated proceeds, and reiterating all I had said a year or more ago in the "Herald" on the subject of the said funds being appropriated to the building of some such affair as a Temperance Hotel and Institute. No reply, and no seconding was made to the said speech. No doubt all were overpowered by my eloquence, as in the instance of the House of Commons, when Pitt adjourned it, to recover itself, after the speech of Sheridan, in the trial of Warren Hastings. It may not be so; but whether or not, some five or six of our , - I being one of that illustrious galaxy, - have now come to the resolve of subscribing a hundred pounds apiece towards the erecting of such a building!! Fancy our little dirty paper refusing to print the finish of my diary, because of its speaking favourably of Wanganui. I spoke to C. Brown about it; when he said it was all right for every settlement to praise itself; leaving me to make the inference that the refusal is Now, what a set of geese he and his are, not to see that I shall now give the said laudation of my old shop, fifty hundred times the publicity it would or could have had in the columns of the wretched hebdomadal, the "Taranaki Herald", for, at first it shall appear in the Wellington papers, with some fitting comments on the supreme consistency of the said "Herald" assuming as its motto, - Then again, copies go on Wednesday, that is to-morrow, by the "Velox" to Sydney and England; and I am pretty sure I have influence enough to get what I say regarding Wanganui, into Chambers' Edin. Journal. The rest I care nothing about. And being thus to be engaged, you will excuse this short scrawl, compared with the communications; and believe me ever, yours most faithfully (Signed) P. Wilson. To:- Donald McLean.